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Halve your consumption of meat to fight climate change

A team at the University of Exeter has presented a report showing that one simple dietary change could significantly lower global carbon dioxide levels.

Getting westerners to eat half as much meat that they currently do would lower the average worldwide meat consumption from 16.6 percent to 15 percent of total daily calorie intake. That would mean that even taking into account the global population increase to 9.3 billion by 2050, less farmland would be needed for livestock and so more could be used for growing biofuels.

The upshot would be a cut in carbon dioxide levels by 25 ppm -- enough to keep the rise in global temperature below two degrees. That's the level beyond which climate experts believe the repercussions could be significant.

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After modelling how other changes in western diets could affect farming by 2050, the team found that a "high-meat, low-efficiency" scenario would increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 55 parts per million.

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Tom Powell, a PhD student who led the project, told the Telegraph: "Our global agricultural system is so inefficient that we harvest about a quarter of everything that grows on the land, but only about seven to eight per cent of what we harvest ends up as food, so there are huge losses there. By focusing on making agriculture more efficient and encouraging people to reduce the amount of meat they eat, we could keep global temperatures within the two degrees threshold."

Co-author Professor Tim Lenton added: "With livestock production accounting for 78 percent of agricultural land use today, this is the area where change could have a significant impact."